Clara Luper, Freedom's Classroom, and the Civil Rights Movement: A Conversation with Marilyn Luper Hildreth

Abstract

Clara Luper, Freedom's Classroom, and the Civil Rights MovementA Conversation with Marilyn Luper Hildreth Editorial note: The University of Oklahoma Press's new edition of Behold the Walls is forthcoming in August 2023. Click for larger view View full resolution Ebony Iman Dallas, Songs of Freedom (2021), acrylic and Ghanaian textiles on hand-carved birchwood / Portrait of activist and teacher Clara Luper singing with members of the NAACP Youth Council [End Page 14] BEARING WITNESS In his ongoing column, which appears in every other issue, Karlos K. Hill highlights the efforts of cultural figures doing works of essential good around issues of social justice. ON AUGUST 19, 1958, a high school history teacher named Clara Luper and thirteen members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council, ranging in age from seven to fifteen, organized a sit-in at a segregated Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City. Within two days, the Katz Drug Company had desegregated not just this one local store but more than fifty locations in states across the Midwest. One of the first sit-ins of the civil rights movement, this peaceful protest by a small group of young activists would galvanize future demonstrators in Oklahoma City and throughout the nation. Over the next six years, Clara Luper and her students organized sit-ins, layins, and boycotts that would eventually lead to the desegregation of white downtown stores and restaurants in advance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. By courageously fighting against injustice while simultaneously centering youth activism, Luper created an enduring legacy of nurturing social change through nonviolent civil disobedience. Clara Luper passed away in June 2011. On May 3, 2023, she would have turned one hundred years old. Additionally, August 19, 2023, will mark the sixty- fifth anniversary of the historic Katz Drug Store sit-in. In anticipation of these upcoming commemorations, I talked with Clara Luper's daughter, Marilyn Luper Hildreth, who participated in the Katz Drug Store sit-in, to help me understand its significance. Click for larger view View full resolution Karlos Hill: To start with a simple question, can you explain to readers who Clara Luper was to you? Marilyn Luper Hildreth: Clara Luper was my mother. And not only was she my mother, but she was a mother to many other children, both in our community and in our society. She would always make room for another child. Mom was a teacher before she became the Youth Council adviser, and she was really popular with her students. She enjoyed creating experiences for young people that they otherwise could never have had, and that was especially true in the classroom. She had a way of bringing history alive in her classes. For example, in order that they could better understand the functions of the government in Washington, DC, she had her students take part in mock elections, where they cast votes to elect fellow classmates as senators, members of the House of Representatives, and president. And for fifty years she took young people to the NAACP National Convention, including people who I call the "have-nots." They did not have a lot of money and did not have a lot of things, but she wanted to give them that opportunity, because she was able to see things in young people that others overlooked. [End Page 15] She believed that all children can learn, so she had to find out how best to teach those young people in order to motivate them to be the best that they could be. She remembered every one of her students for the rest of her life. She had a real concern for them and felt deeply committed to them, and they felt the same way about her. They knew that she would always be honest with them. Even when she was correcting them, they knew that she was trying to help guide them in the right direction. She tried to bring out the best in everyone she dealt with. Hill: Can you share a favorite story about your mother, perhaps a time when she helped to guide you in that same kind of way? Luper Hildreth: Mom...